Competing Cattle to Be Airlifted Out : Helicopters May Rescue Desert’s Dwindling Herds of Bighorn Sheep

It wasn’t long ago that Mark Jorgensen could perch on the ridge above Hellhole Canyon and within minutes spot a bighorn sheep or two maneuvering nimbly up the sheer, rocky cliffs.

These days, however, the naturalist at Anza-Borrego Desert State Park can search long and hard with his high-powered binoculars and still fail to find any of the majestic animals roaming Hellhole’s rugged terrain.

“This is ideal sheep habitat--it’s remote, has steep slopes, good vegetation, a year-round water supply and plenty of space,” Jorgensen said one recent afternoon, sitting on a boulder amid the low shrubs and cacti that carpet the canyon’s rim. “If things were right, we’d be sighting bighorn here all the time.”

But things aren’t right. Like several other isolated corners of the 600,000-acre desert park, Hellhole Canyon and the flats above it have become infested with a hardy band of about 100 range cattle that are usurping the native bighorn’s realm.

In addition to competing with the sheep for food, water and habitat, the wild cattle--remnants of extinct domestic herds brought in by ranchers around the turn of the century--carry viral diseases that biologists believe have taken a toll on the park’s bighorn population, which numbers about 400.

Fed up with the livestock’s impact on the spectacular sheep, Jorgensen and other wildlife officials are mapping plans to deploy an airborne cavalry of sorts to remove the troublesome cattle from the wilderness area.

Next month, biologists will ride helicopters into canyons favored by the cattle, shoot the 1,000-pound bovines with tranquilizers, hobble them and haul them out one by one in heavy-duty cargo nets.

The beasts will be held in temporary corrals and inspected by the state for brands that identify ownership. Those that are not claimed by local ranchers will then be auctioned off for slaughter.

The cost of the airlift will come to about $30,000, and an additional $200,000 will be spent to erect barbed-wire fencing along sections of the park boundary that have been breached by cattle in the past. Even Jorgensen, a confirmed bighorn fan and state park official since 1972, concedes that “it’s a heck of a lot of money to spend just to remove some cows that are going to die anyway.”

The airlift is believed to be the first of its kind, but a series of other cow-abatement tactics in the last 15 years have either failed or have raised the hackles of animal protection activists and state and local cattlemen’s groups. Experienced cowboys have tried--and failed--to rope the cattle and drive them from the canyons. Traps baited with alfalfa have been set and left untouched. Officials from the state Department of Fish and Game have attempted in vain to immobilize the cattle with chemical darts.

In 1985, Jorgensen asked state Sen. Robert Presley (D-Riverside) to sponsor legislation allowing park officials to shoot and kill the animals in the wild after “a reasonable effort” was made to remove them alive.

“The most cost-effective and logical approach is just to shoot them and let the coyotes have a barbecue,” Jorgensen said. “But that idea didn’t go over real well. It just wasn’t politically palatable. The cowboys screamed.”

One of those “cowboys,” Phin Spencer, president of the local branch of the state Cattlemen’s Assn., explained why.

“We empathize with their problem, but we don’t think the answer is to shoot cattle,” Spencer said. “That would set a legal precedent. That would mean a neighbor down the road who got mad if one of my cows ate apples off his apple tree could just shoot my cow. It isn’t right.”

Instead, Spencer and fellow cattle ranchers suggested that park officials sterilize the bulls and allow the notorious herd to die off naturally. But that idea didn’t win much support.

So the airlift plan was proposed, and state park funds were ultimately approved for the project.

Jorgensen hopes that, once the cattle have been hauled out, Hellhole Canyon and other spots trampled and befouled by the lumbering livestock will heal and the bighorn will gradually return.

“Bighorns are extremely sensitive to competition from other, larger herbivores, and whether it’s cattle, sheep or burros, they always end up losing,” Jorgensen said. “So we’ve simply got to remove the competition.”

Efforts to protect the bighorn sheep--distinctive because of their dramatic, curled horns and ability to scale steep, seemingly impassable terrain with ease--were not always necessary.

In the early 1800s, nearly 2 million sheep existed on the North American continent, with three subspecies--California, Nelson and peninsular bighorns--ranging unmolested across mountain summits and up and down canyon walls throughout this state.

Gradually, mining and cattle ranching began to encroach on the sheep’s far-flung territories. Loss of habitat and watering holes, combined with hunting and diseases borne by domestic livestock, whittled away at the bighorn herds, and by 1873 the state declared them fully protected mammals, guaranteeing them safety from hunting.

Since then, the animals have slowly rebounded, and in most cases, their future looks bright. Dick Weaver, a wildlife biologist with the state Department of Fish and Game who is an expert on the mountain sheep, said 4,800 bighorn were counted statewide last June--up by 1,000 from a 1972 census.

“We’ve got 50 herds now in various mountain ranges, and all in all, we have reason to be encouraged,” said Weaver, who conducted the first statewide investigation of the bighorn in 1968 and coordinates an annual count. “We’ve reintroduced sheep into historic ranges where they had vanished, like the Sierras, and put in water supplies to make permanent range out of what was seasonal range.”

Indeed, the bighorn has flourished to such a degree that this year, for the first time since 1873, hunting will be allowed in California on a limited basis. A 1986 bill by Assemblyman Richard Mountjoy (R-Monrovia) cleared the way for the issuance of about 10 permits for hunts in the Old Dad and Marble Mountains, two Mojave Desert ranges with particularly dense herds.

Animal protection groups fought the bill. But Weaver noted that hunters will pay top price for a shot at a trophy of ram horns, which can be as long as 40 inches from base to tip. The record price for a bighorn tag is $79,000, and Weaver said revenue from the sale of hunting permits will allow the state to pump more money into enhancing the bighorns’ habitat.

“I don’t expect it will have much of an impact on the population, as long as we’re careful,” Weaver said.

Despite the optimism, both Weaver and Jorgensen agree that “trouble spots” where bighorn populations remain unstable and threatened still exist. One of those is in Anza-Borrego State Park.

“We’ve got an area in the south end of the park where we counted 120 animals in the late ‘70s,” Jorgensen said. “Now there are 45 animals. And there are huge voids in the habitat throughout the park where bighorn should, but don’t, exist.”

Park biologists suspect the cattle are the culprits.

At one time, the peninsular bighorn--a subspecies that ranges from Palm Springs to the tip of Baja California--had free reign in the craggy, russet-colored mountain ranges that rise steeply from the floor of the Anza Borrego Desert. But in the late 1800s, the cattle industry took root in the region because ranchers valued the desert for wintering and spring feeding.

Although the last cattle drive through the area was in 1927, grazing continued well after the state park was established in 1933. In 1970, grazing leases were canceled by the state and cattlemen were asked to round up their stock. But strays remained in the wilderness area, hidden away in canyons out of easy reach of wranglers.

Over the years, the stock have “trampled habitat, fouled water holes, caused an incredible stench and left cow plops all over, which the 1 million visitors we get each year don’t exactly appreciate.”

In addition, evidence shows a dozen diseases found in cattle have hurt the bighorn, either killing it or weakening its immune system and leaving it vulnerable to pneumonia.

“Historically, we have seen many instances where cattle were introduced into bighorn ranges and within a few years the bighorn disappear, and disease is a key reason,” said Dave Jessup, a wildlife pathologist for the Department of Fish and Game. Among the leading cattle-borne diseases that infect sheep are bluetongue, parainfluenza-III and a virus peculiar to cattle that suppresses the immune system.

Biologists with the Desert Bighorn Research Institute in Riverside County plan to take blood samples from the airlifted cattle for use in their research of the diseases, which may continue to plague the sheep even after the livestock are removed.

If all goes well, Jorgensen hopes to have helicopters swooping down on the unsuspecting cattle by mid-February. So far, the bearded naturalist says, he hasn’t heard a peep of opposition.

“These are good times for the bighorn, and I’m hoping people will realize that and realize that this is the only alternative left to us,” Jorgensen said. “Hoisting cattle around by chopper is not an economically sound thing to do. But it’s worth just about anything to me to get those animals out of the park.”